In the past year, cryptocurrency hacking damage has increased by almost 50% to a figure of $3.6 billion.
During the year, 20 public blockchains suffered serious security incidents. Ethereum, BNB Chain and Solana made up the top three in terms of losses. They also topped the list of attacks, with Binance leading the way.
Vulnerability exploitation ranked first in both frequency and damage: $1.458 billion was lost as a result of 87 exploits.
Experts noted that protocols audited and unaudited were attacked to almost equal degrees – 51.5% and 48.5% of hacks respectively.
Of the stolen funds, approximately $1.396 billion, or 38.7%, was transferred by attackers to the Tornado Cash mixing service.
The projects managed to recover only 8% of the funds stolen in 2022 – about $289 million.
Analysts estimated the global volume of criminal funds in the crypto industry at $13.76bn last year. Attacks and exploits came second, with money-laundering schemes accounting for $7.33bn. Financial pyramid schemes accounted for $1bn in losses and frauds for $830m.
Experts counted 243 fraudulent rug-pull cases worth $425 million during the year. In about 86.4% of the incidents, the loss did not exceed $1 million.
